Trust
by owlcroft
Summary: The judge has to deal with his feelings of guilt after finding McCormick on The Hillside of Death. A companion piece to "Belief".


A/N: Thanks again to L.M.L. for the speedy beta. And so much more.

TRUST

by

Owlcroft

"Aw, he's fine. The nurses are spoiling him rotten, and he's on solid food now. Okay, banana pudding and oatmeal aren't all that solid, but it's a start." Hardcastle shifted a trifle uneasily in the visitor's chair in Harper's office. "He's gonna be fine."

Frank looked at him sympathetically, understanding that they were both being reassured by that last statement. "Y'know, you never did explain how you knew where he was. You feel like telling an old friend how that came about? Off the record, of course." Harper leaned back and looked at the judge expectantly.

Hardcastle scratched idly at the tip of his nose, then sighed and rested his elbows on the chair arms. "That's a little hard to do. You ever run across something that you don't understand, and you don't really believe in, but it works?" He lifted his brows at the man across the desk.

"Well, I did get to talk to, ah," Harper shifted a piece of paper aside and peered down at the one underneath, "Millie Denton some that night. You were off in the corner, pretending to drink coffee while we waited for the doctor to come tell us he was stable enough for surgery."

"What'd she tell you?" asked the judge cautiously.

Frank cocked his head to one side and half closed his eyes. "She said she'd seen visions of things that had come true. That she'd 'seen' Mark get shot and she thought he'd been killed, but you were convinced he was still alive and you had to find him." He clasped his hands and looked up from under his brows at the judge. "That you figured Mark had been taken to that area and she went with you to try to help find him. That about the size of it?"

Hardcastle nodded, then sighed. "She was right about an awful lotta stuff, Frank. All kinds of things, she 'saw' them, then they came true. But I wouldn't listen to her . . . _or_ to McCormick . . . when she told us he was gonna get shot that night." He rubbed a weary hand across his face and sighed heavily. "_He _believed her. Why couldn't I? We argued about it."

"Now there's a rare occurrence," murmured the lieutenant.

The judge shot him a look, but continued. "He believed he was gonna get shot and die, but he went with me anyway. How can I deal with that, Frank? It's my fault he's in the hospital right now, and almost _did _die."

"I got some prime property in a swamp in Louisiana for sale. Or a nice bridge in Brooklyn." Frank quirked a smile. "I just mean, you can't live your life believing in every nutso thing that comes along, no matter how plausible it might seem at the time. You have to go with your experience and knowledge and sense of reality."

"Well, a gunshot wound's pretty real," growled Hardcastle.

"Okay, I get what you're saying, Milt. But do you?" Harper leaned forward and fixed a determined gaze on the judge. "You're saying you _knew _Mark was gonna get shot and you did nothing to stop it. But that's not the case, here."

Hardcastle frowned and said, "Yeah, it is."

"Nope. You believed he wouldn't or you would have left him home." Frank sat back with a satisfied look. "You'd've been goofy to believe in somebody's visions, and you're not goofy. Well," he looked thoughtful, "maybe a little."

"McCormick believed it." The older man ran a hand across his thinning hair. "Okay, yeah, he's a little goofy, too, but Frank you don't know all the stuff she saw that came true."

Harper shook his head. "And I don't have to. All I know is that you did what you thought you ought to and so did Mark. You neither one of you backed down from what you thought was right because of something that can't be explained or understood. That sounds pretty rational to me. Yet you want to sit here and blame yourself for letting Mark make his own decisions and be responsible for himself." Frank shook his head again. "You want to blame somebody, blame the guys who shot him, who killed Charlie Clarkson. You can't blame yourself for what happened."

The judge sat in grim silence for a moment, then said, "But I coulda told him to stay home. I knew he was halfway believing Millie."

"And if you'd told home to stay home, what would he have done?" Frank spread his hands apart and looked at Hardcastle in a kindly manner. "You'd've had a big argument and he would've won and gone with you or else he'd've followed you in the Coyote."

Hardcastle waved a hand dismissively. "You're saying, no matter what, he was gonna go there and get shot? I can't believe that, Frank. There's gotta be free will here."

"For that, you'll have to talk to a priest. I'm just a cop." Harper shuffled the papers in front of him into a semi-neat pile. "A busy cop. But, Milt --"

The judge looked up as the lieutenant paused. "Yeah, Frank?"

Harper shrugged. "What I wanted to ask was how you knew where to look for Mark? Mrs. Denton told me you drove around some, but seemed to be circling that area the whole time. She told me she started recognizing stuff and finally saw some big rock or something and knew that's where he was, but how did _you _know? How did you know where to start looking in the first place?"

Hardcastle sat in silence, looking thoughtful. When he spoke, it was a in quiet tone, "I don't know. I just went there." He looked up and added, "I never thought about it. I just . . . trusted my instincts, I guess."

"Hmm," Frank considered for a moment then nodded. "So how about you give yourself some credit for that to offset the guilt, huh? Now, go on over to the hospital and tell Mark I said 'hi'. And get some rest, okay? Being responsible for everything that goes wrong can make a guy tired."

The judge pushed himself out of the chair and stretched his back, looking pensive. "I dunno, Frank. Maybe I am a little too tired to think straight. But it still seems to me --"

Harper made a shooing motion toward his office door. "Don't think, Milt. Just keep going by instinct and you'll both be fine."

_finis_


End file.
